City targets 39 blighted buildings on Demolition Day

Updated 10:40 pm, Saturday, May 18, 2013

Photo: J. Patric Schneider, For The Chronicle

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Mayor Annise Parker celebrates as an abandoned house off of Lavender St. is demolished during the fourth annual Demo Day on Saturday, May 18, 2013, in Houston. Demo Day launches Mayor Parker's 2013 Demolition Initiative, which includes the removal of 136 dangerous buildings throughout Houston over the next two months.

Mayor Annise Parker celebrates as an abandoned house off of Lavender St. is demolished during the fourth annual Demo Day on Saturday, May 18, 2013, in Houston. Demo Day launches Mayor Parker's 2013 Demolition

An abandoned house off of Lavender St. is demolished during the fourth annual Demolition Day. The initiative on Saturday took down 31 homes.

An abandoned house off of Lavender St. is demolished during the fourth annual Demolition Day. The initiative on Saturday took down 31 homes.

Photo: J. Patric Schneider, Freelance

City targets 39 blighted buildings on Demolition Day

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Before the owner died, neighbors said, the house at 4522 Lavender in Kashmere Gardens was one of the prettiest on the street.

But that was at least seven years ago, they said, before the fire, before vagrants trashed it and before the lot became overgrown. A utility worker even was stung by bees that one squatter was raising in the backyard, neighbor Mary Hawthorne said.

With a sharp crunch that brought children into their front yards to watch, the house, and then the garage behind it, fell under the teeth of a backhoe Saturday, the centerpiece of Mayor Annise Parker's fourth annual Demolition Day.

"You were just afraid to pass by because you never knew, you couldn't see back there," said Hawthorne, who's lived a few doors down for three decades. "There were people staying in there at night. We're just so grateful to have it down."

Though members of the Houston Contractors Association have been donating their time, labor and materials to help bring down blighted properties since the 1980s, Parker has grouped many such demolitions into one day to raise awareness of the "cancer" eating away at some neighborhoods from within, as blighted properties enable prostitution and drug use.

Saturday saw eight crews raze 31 homes, four garages and four sheds. Another 97 structures have gone through complex legal proceedings - which include owners ignoring multiple demands to secure their properties - and are slated to be razed by the end of July, officials said.

"These are not fancy houses, but they are nice, comfortable, safe houses, and this is a neighborhood. It is a neighborhood that deserves better," Parker said, motioning to the surrounding homes as neighbors stood in the street, watched from their porches or stared through screen doors. "The people who own these houses around us care about their houses and they care about their neighborhood and they care about the safety of their kids. Today, we are here to cut this cancer out."

By far the most structures on the city demolition schedule - 65 of the 136 - are in Councilman Jerry Davis' District B, which covers Fifth Ward, Kashmere Gardens, Acres Homes and Greenspoint.

"There's an elementary school right down the street from here, so kids have to walk past this house every day," Davis said. "The last thing we want to hear is someone being hurt in this house."

Neighbor Rosalee Ellis, who has lived on the block more than 50 years, wondered when the debris at the site would be cleaned up and if the vegetation would be trimmed. Kenneth Ellis called the day "bittersweet."

Parker said the lengthy legal process is prescribed by state law, which is "on the side of the property owner even if they're bad neighbors." The city has razed 2,000 structures on her watch, Parker said, adding that the city's initial "dirty half-dozen" of the worst blighted apartment complexes already are gone, with work underway on the next list of six.

Richard Peltier, president of the Houston Contractors Association, said his crew will leave the wrecked house in a pile and put a safety fence around the site. A city crew, he said, will clean the waste from the site in a week or so.

"It's just giving back to the neighborhoods, making then safer, because we do a lot of work in these neighborhoods, too," he said.

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